LTE definitely needed and coming next year...dont mention Voice and SMS please

The unremitting growth in data traffic will bring about a 3G network capacity crisis for some mobile network operators as early as 2010. This dire scenario, according to a new study from Unwired Insight, will only be avoided by the early deployment of LTE, and the acceptance that additional LTE spectrum will be required to satisfy this demand.

With 3G traffic volumes set to increase by a factor of 20 by 2015--driven by many technology factors and also dramatic reductions in mobile data pricing--Alastair Brydon, co-author of the new study, points to the example of mobile broadband pricing that has fallen as low as US$2 per gigabyte, "which is nearly half a million times smaller than the price per gigabyte of an SMS message."

Brydon believes that early LTE will be necessary for the following reasons:

• As 2G users continue to migrate to 3G services, the available capacity per 3G user will decline rapidly in networks utilising HSPA, to less than 100MB per user per month in some cases. LTE will be essential to counter this decline.
• While LTE promises peak data rates of over 100Mbps, this is only possible with wide allocations of spectrum, and particularly good radio conditions. Average data rates from practical LTE networks will be nowhere near the peak values.
• Network operators will have an insatiable appetite for LTE spectrum, to stand any chance of keeping up with forecast traffic demand. For some operators, 10MHz of spectrum will be able to support forecast traffic levels only until 2011. A further 10MHz will be needed by 2012 and another 10MHz in 2013.
  

Unwired Insight claims LTE's ability to relieve the capacity constraints of HSPA networks will be limited initially, until operators can acquire additional spectrum and seed a sufficient number of LTE devices in the market place. "But, we don't expect to see LTE handsets until 2011," the company warns.

Fourteen operators have committed to LTE rollouts next year, up from 10 in March, the research firm said. It predicts the LTE network gear market will be worth more than $5 billion by 2013, dominated by E-UTRAN macrocell (eNodeB) deployments.

It also expects the LTE customer base to top 72 million by 2013, mostly users with laptops, netbooks or dongles, with the first smartphones expected to hit the market after 2011.

In another forecast, Informa Telecoms and Media said Japan would account for more than half of Asia's 14.4 million LTE subscribers by 2015.

NTT DoCoMo, Japanese rival eMobile and China Mobile will be the first to launch LTE in the region, Informa said, with Hong Kong's CSL likely to follow soon after.

But rollouts in the region may be hindered by delays, as Japan and Hong Kong are so far the only Asian countries to have awarded spectrum for LTE.

Regulators in other nations are scrambling to free up enough spectrum, Informa added. Even in Japan, there is not enough 2100MHz spectrum available to support DoCoMo's full LTE plans, so it will use its newly allocated 1.5GHz for LTE from 2010.

According to news sources in South Korea, LG Telecom (LGT) quietly revealed their intention to migrate to LTE for 4G service in South Korea. LG-Nortel and Samsung will provide the multi-mode base stations which are part of the company's green network upgrade. SKT and KTF (now part of KT), the other two mobile operators in the country, have already announced their LTE migration path for 4G previously. Unlike SKT and KTF who will migrate from HSPA to LTE, LGT will go from EV-DO to LTE, similar to the case of Verizon Wireless.

It was probably a matter of time for LGT to announce the LTE migration plan since it was only running EV-DO network, and this officially puts LGT on the LTE camp. Now, my speculation is that other major EV-DO operators (noticeably, Sprint) who haven't announced such plans will follow the same path down the road since WiMAX does not seem to be a viable migration path for the FDD part of the network.